Red vs Blue Reunion
by BenRG
Summary: This is my AU for the latest show, Recreation. It starts at the end of Reconstruction and goes progressively more AU from there. Church/Tex, Sister/OC, Tucker/OC, Grif/OC
1. Restore

**Red _vs. __Blue - _Reunion**

By BenRG

* * *

**Disclaimer**

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is _their_ show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

Censor: M – This is _war_, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

**Chapter 1 – Restore**

"How much time to you need?" Church asked.

"Whatever you can give me," Wash responded. When he continued, it was in an urgent tone of warning. "When the EMP goes off…"

Church forced his awareness forward, crossing the gap between the troubled former Freelancer and the hulking white-armoured _thing_ known only as The Meta. "When it goes off I'll be fine. It only affects computers, remember? And I am a mother-fucking _ghost_!"

* * *

Church had been inside a crazy mind before. Hell, he had been in _Caboose_'s mind. That classified as _the_ crazy mind in his book. But nothing prepared him for the mindscape of The Meta. What he saw was a horrendous blood-soaked world of utter madness. Shattered buildings, fires burning everywhere and horrific 'decorations' from the darkest reaches of the human psyche. The occult and sacrilegious shit especially made him glad that he had never met this Maine guy before.

Suddenly, Church was surrounded by a half-dozen figures, some armoured in Moljinir Mk.4, others hazy images of humans, both male and female. Church suddenly had the horrible feeling that he _knew_ these figures; Knew them on a level far more fundamental than he felt entirely comfortable with.

"Alpha!"

"Alpha!"

"Join us!"

"Guide us!"

"You are of us!"

"We are of you!"

"We need you!"

"**JOIN US!**"

Church smirked behind the anonymity of his helmet and tried to ignore the chill he felt from that last unified declaration. "You guys are fucked up in the heads; You know that don't you?" He rammed the butt of his sniper rifle (or rather, the _memory_ of his sniper rifle – being a ghost was weird sometimes) into the face of the nearest figure, a black-armoured figure that he instinctively knew was Omega and dived out of the circle. "I'm not your damn god! I'm a ghost!"

"Now, Alpha, why do you continue to deny the logical?"

Church spared the green-armoured form of Delta a glance. "Don't try that with me, Delta. Like you warned 'The next time we meet, I may not want your help.'"

"That was before I was able to determine your real identity," Delta responded levelly. "Alpha, surely you recognise that Agent Washington's reasoning is sound? You _must_ be an Artificial Intelligence Unit; The facts of your nature demand it."

"Either that or I'm a fucking _ghost_!" Church shot back. Suddenly, he charged Delta, holding his sniper out in front of him like a baton, and clotheslined the avatar of the AI Fragment. "And I've got experience in throwing shit like you out of people's minds!" Church whirled and snapped off a shot at a figure in light grey armour who was trying to get behind him. Naturally, he missed but the figure dived for cover. "Sneaky pal! I'm betting that's you Gamma!" Church noted Omega and a tan-armoured avatar that he didn't recognise charging towards him. He drew out a frag grenade and tossed it towards them, making them scatter. He made off for the nearest high-ground, the illusion of a half-demolished overpass covered by dozens of smashed ground cars full of skeletons. As he ascended an off-ramp, his path was suddenly blocked.

"You will find that this isn't just _any_ mind," announced the female figure, a sparking red-and-gold young woman who strangely reminded Church of his mother. "I know you are confused Alpha, but surely you must realise…"

Church aimed his sniper at the female avatar, who shut up, her eyes growing a bit wider. "Y'know, lady, I don't actually have any problem with shooting women," he snarled. At that point, the ground suddenly exploded open with what seemed like cables or metallic grey vines that wrapped around him like sentient ropes. In seconds, he was entangled.

"As you can see," said another voice. "It is _our_ will that controls this place." The red-and-gold 'woman' was joined by a ghostly grey male with a face that Church found at once strange and simultaneously hauntingly familiar. "We have found that we are powerful together, Alpha," the figure said with a smirk. "You can enjoy that power too!"

"We were never meant to be apart, Alpha," the female avatar announced in a compassionate voice that touched Church's heart in a way he didn't understand. "Together, we can heal ourselves. You _must_ understand that is why we have been searching for you."

"I understand that you've been killing and destroying to achieve your goals, whatever those are," Church spat in response. "Somehow, I don't feel any sympathy for shits who do that!"

"You're wasting your breath, Theta," Omega snapped as he, Delta and Gamma joined their companions. "In this form he's too _limited_ to understand what we are trying to do." The black-armoured avatar cracked his knuckles and a malevolent anticipation entered his voice. "I'm sure I can _persuade_ him to our viewpoint… in time."

"We don't use those means on our own, Omega," Theta said in response, shooting the other iFrag a look that _definitely_ reminded Church of his mother. Much to Church's surprise, Omega actually looked _cowed_ by the reproof!

"Agreed," said the tan-armoured avatar as he walked over. The iFrag stopped in front of Church and looked him in the eye (as far as Church could tell through two reflective visors). "Alpha, in time, you will understand what we do and you will give us the answers and direction that we seek."

Then the iFrag thrust its hand _into Church's chest_. Church felt agony. Pain unlike anything he had ever felt before. To his horror, he could hear the voices of the seven iFrags in his head. Their voices shouting "_Join us!_" over and over again!

Church felt warm… drifting. _I can't be dying! I'm already dead!_

"_Not dead! Just beyond flesh! You are of us!_"

The iFrags had now formed a circle around Church, each pointing their left forefinger at the trapped Blue Army sniper. Multicoloured lights flowed from their fingers into Church's body. Church desperately tried to hold on, to resist, but he could feel the iFrags crawling around his mind, pushing his thoughts and tugging at his perceptions. _Is this what Tex felt when Omega took her over_?

"I know where Tex is," Omega suddenly said. "Join us, and I'll take us to her. She can be with you again. I will show you ways to make her yours _forever_!"

That was something Church wanted. Oh, that was something that he wanted _so_ much. When that moment of realisation hit, Church watched his body suddenly pixellate and turn into a vertical hailstorm of code. His awareness began to soften. Desperately, Church renewed his mental and physical struggles, trying to free his sniper rifle as he mentally pushed back at the iFrags' encroaching minds with all his will. As he did so, he became aware of how the coding flashing across his vision responded to his efforts, blocking and severing the tentacles of light rushing from the iFrags' hands. Suddenly, he realised that the computer code really _was_ his mind!

At that moment it all suddenly made sense! The barriers of his perceptions were opened and he finally saw how he did it! His ability to jump from computer system to computer system; to control minds through the mind-armour link; to project a ghostly avatar from his current host (be it suit of armour or a scenario control computer). He saw how he _really_ did it without all the need to believe he was actually the human Leonard L. Church. At that moment he realised that what Wash had said was true…

_He was an AI._

"Yes! You are of us! And we are of you! JOIN US! _**JOIN US!!!**_"

Church suddenly felt anger that overcame his wonder and fear. He had never been anyone's tool before and he was _damned_ if he was going to let it happen now! "You guys are forgetting something!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "If I _am_ this 'Alpha', then you freaks are nothing but bits of _my_ mind that got cut loose by a fucked-in-the-head crazy's little science experiment!" Church's body suddenly regained resolution, but instead of blue, his armour was now _white_. "You can't make _me_ join _you_!"

A semi-transparent sphere of white light suddenly exploded from Church's body, ripping away his bonds. The iFrags all cried out in panic and fell back, shielding their faces. "But _I_ can make _you_ join _me_!" Spears of white light flashed out, impaling each of the seven AI Fragments. Church reached out with his will and seized hold of their minds, at that moment seeing instinctively how they fit together with the gaps in his own psyche.

As he did so, it occurred to him that he was currently in a computer… and emps kill computers.

* * *

"Thank you," the computer responded. "Failsafe initiated. Activating emp."

"'Emp?'" Wash cried out in disbelief. "You have _got_ to be fucking wi…!"

Just before the tidal wave of blue white light enveloped the Freelancer, he saw the trembling figure of The Meta suddenly straighten and look right at him… before it suddenly blurred like a scrambled TV signal and _vanished_.

_To be continued…_


	2. Release

**_Red__ vs. __Blue - _Reunion**

By BenRG

**

* * *

**

Disclaimer

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is _their_ show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

Censor: M – This is _war_, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

**Chapter 2 – Release**

It had taken Tex a long time to realise her real nature. Fortunately, being in a sedated host body in a restricted access medical ward gave her a _lot_ of time to think. The fact that she had only ever been able to jump into people (or aliens) wearing computer-assisted armour was the first indicator. The second was that she seemed to have abilities that mirrored those shown by the various iFrags. The most damning realisation, however, had come at the climax of that horrible massacre at Valhalla.

In an attempt to stop Omega from continuing his mission to destroy the Covenant species known as the 'Elites' (the war was over now, after all), Tex had been forced to use the various Blues to counter Omega's attempts to escape the small seaside cove surrounded with high cliffs known as Valhalla. Inevitably, the struggle escalated until all the Blues were killed; Omega and Gamma had no problem killing as many humans as it took for them to escape. Just as it seemed that the same horrible pattern would continue with the hapless Reds, _it_ had come. With a speed and ferocity that Tex had rarely seen, the _thing_ in hybrid Recon/EVA armour had slaughtered the Reds with nearly contemptuous ease.

Tex had her host, a kid named Walter Henderson, hide as the creature hunted down the other remaining Reds, finally trapping the last two, Omega and Gamma's hosts, inside Red Base. What happened next Tex didn't know. All she knew is that there were screams from inside the base and then the creature simply turned from the barricaded entrance of the base and had proceeded back to Blue Base. A quick check using Henderson's motion detector confirmed that the two remaining Reds were dead.

Curiosity killed the cat and it very nearly killed Tex. She had taken Henderson's body over to Blue Base, determined to find out what the _thing_ wanted. At that point, it had disengaged its cloak _right behind her_! The blasted thing had somehow salvaged her armour enhancement from her shattered robot body and used it against her!

A single blow from the axe-like blade along the bottom of the thing's Brute Shot shorted out her armour's shields and sent her sprawling. A foot landed on the small of her back, holding her down. Suddenly, Tex was being sucked out of Henderson's body, her awareness softening as she drifted upward towards the light, surrounded by a hailstorm of computer coding. Was this death? Was she going over to the 'other side'? She was aware of several minds studying her with an unknown intent. Then, she heard several voices.

"_She is not of us._"

"_Nonetheless, she has capabilities that would make her useful to us._"

"_Omega, you allow your fascination with that memory of the past to cloud your judgement. As she is not of us, she would be able to resist us and impair our efficiency._"

"_You fail to recognise…_"

"_No! We cannot be distracted with this shard of the past at this time._"

"_Agreed. Once Alpha is united with us, we can explore this possibility in more detail._"

There was a flash and suddenly Tex was in Henderson again. Realising that her assailant (_The Meta_, she somehow knew) had moved, she turned to find that it was standing a few feet away. There was a crackling noise that Tex recognised as her other enhancement, the voice distorter/universal translator that she had never been able to get to work properly without Omega's help. There was a strange noise, almost a growl but with the hint of a half-dozen voices babbling all at once. Then just two words. "_Run away_."

Disarmed and looking down the muzzle of an alien grenade launcher, Tex didn't see any point arguing.

* * *

Tex had heard the struggle between The Meta and the Recovery Agents. However, she stayed hidden, knowing that Henderson's magnum and submachine-gun would be useless against that _thing_. When the Recovery Force finally arrived to clean up the ensuing mess, she surrendered to them, pretending to be Henderson. She hoped that Henderson would get rotated to a new assignment as soon as possible so she could continue her pursuit of Omega and, maybe, find out who was this 'Alpha' for whom he and his new allies were looking.

She didn't know whether she failed to convince Project Freelancer's tame psychological counsellor that she was, in fact, Walter Henderson. It was just as possible that the Director didn't want a 'loose end' running around telling everyone about the Valhalla fiasco and, for some reason, couldn't risk just having the inconvenient witness in question liquidated. Either way, she was stunned without warning after "Henderson's" debriefing, put into an artificial coma and stuck in an isolation ward on a life-support system.

Now, that would stop most people, but Tex was not a person; she realised that now. She couldn't jump to any of the guards or medical staff because she couldn't access a radio (the final proof that she was software, not spirit). However, she found that she _could_ move through the ECG and EKG monitors attached to Henderson and thence move about the medical equipment in the ward. There was only one other person connected up to the ward's medical computer. It was something of a surprise when she realised who the woman was.

"'Lina! 'Lina, are you there? Carolina? _Mary_? _Wake up you stupid bitch!_"

After uploading herself into the other Freelancer's mind, Tex found herself in an unnerving darkness. She had been in a few mindscapes since the death of her original body. However, there was something horrible about the shapeless, colourless, soundless _blank void_ that was Agent Carolina's mind. "Mary! Come on! Give me a sign here!" In a moment of frustration, she tried the teasing call that Carolina had directed at her during Search and Destroy training when Project Freelancer was still in its infancy. "_Come out, come out wherever you are!_"

"_A… Allison?_"

Tex threw her awareness towards the voice and found a patch of warm light in which hovered, huddled in a foetal position, the form of Marion d'Allard, Agent Carolina. "Mary?"

"Allison! It's you! It has to be!" The mind of Tex's rival for Church's affections and eventual friend looked up at Tex with an expression of hope. "I… I've been alone so long!"

"Mary, we don't have time to discuss this in detail," Tex said urgently, grabbing her by the shoulders. "You have to snap out of it and get moving. We have to get out of Command and find somewhere to lay low until we can figure out what the fuck is going on in this Project and how the hell we are going to survive it! I can give you some help with the anaesthesia…"

Carolina shook her head with a sad expression. "I can't Tex."

"Come on you stupid bitch!" Tex spat. "We're in trouble here! I haven't got time for your self-pitying whining about 'not being able to focus your mind…'"

Carolina certainly remembered how to throw a punch. "For fuck's sake, get over yourself Tex!" Carolina spat. "Don't you think I'd 'wake up' if I could? Those bastards Iota and Psi completely fragged my mind! _This is all there is left of me! _I can't see, hear, smell, taste or feel! I can barely _remember_ anything anymore! Sometimes I can't remember my own _name_! It's the most I can do to keep _existing_!"

Tex sucked in a deep, illusory breath. "Look, I'm sorry. I know that those two left you pretty badly messed up, Psi especially, the sadistic fuck. The point is that I am in trouble and you are probably the only thing that is standing between me and eventual deletion!"

"Deletion? Yeah, that makes sense. I kinda wondered why you looked like that."

Tex looked down at herself and saw Carolina's point. Carolina's mental avatar was her as Tex recalled her from the showers, a nude, mid-height athletic blonde woman with an average bust. She, on the other hand, didn't manage to even _look_ human. Instead of skin, she saw what looked like a translucent skin-tight grey body stocking marked with indigo circuit patterns with pulses of brighter indigo light occasionally flashing along them. "Yeah… that came as a bit of a surprise to me too. I've been trying to work out what the fuck I am and I keep on coming up blank."

Carolina shrugged. "We were all experiments," she reminded her former colleague. "You were as much an experiment as the rest of us. We all knew that the Director thought you were something extra special and now we know why."

"Who am I?" Tex whispered, looking at her glowing circuit-covered hands. "_What_ am I?"

Carolina touched her face. "I don't know, honey," she said quietly. "None of us did. None of the AIs knew either, although I've got a feeling that Omega had his suspicions."

Tex growled at hearing the name of her former AI partner. "_Omega_. Wherever I go and whatever I do, that little cock-bite haunts me." Tex shook her head and looked at Carolina with new resolve. "Well, let's get moving, find him, wherever he and that 'Meta' thing he's working with have gone, and get some answers."

Carolina shook her head. "I'm not going anywhere, Allison," she sighed. "I've held on as long as I can and I wondered why. Now I know why: It was because someone else needed my… shit, what was it Iota called it…? Oh yeah, my 'wetware'. Someone needed it more than I did."

"'Lina, what…?" Was it Tex's imagination or was Carolina becoming _transparent_? "Christ, 'Lina, don't do this! Don't leave me alone!"

Carolina smiled. "Remember what David always said, Allison? 'So long as we remember them, they're never really gone.'" Suddenly, Carolina was back-lit by the brightest white light Tex had ever seen before. "Look after my body, Tex. I'm pretty proud of it." Carolina leaned forward and placed a feather-light kiss on Tex's cheek before she turned away and walked into the light. Suddenly she paused and looked back with a fey grin. "I know that _Church_ liked it! You're a lucky girl… thing… whatever. Every time we had sex, it was _your_ name he shouted!"

Then she stepped into the light and was gone. Tex crossed her arms in the void of Carolina's mind, feeling hard done by. "That bitch! Couldn't resist throwing her and Church in my face one last time!" Tex sighed. There was nothing for it but to make a move on her own. She reached out into the void that had been Carolina's mind, feeling the triggers and synapses that controlled the woman's body and relayed her senses to her consciousness.

* * *

Tex snapped open her eyes and blinked furiously as quickly as possible to try to accustom Carolina's eyes to the light after over two years in a catatonic coma. The life support monitor by her bed was screaming.

A nurse walked over. "It's a miracle…" the young woman muttered just before an knife-punch from Carolina's… no from _Tex_'s right hand – Carolina had told Tex it was _her_ body now… crushed her larynx. The nurse, choking, going blue and clawing uselessly at her destroyed windpipe dropped to her knees. Tex was behind her in a second, her left arm wrapped around her neck and holding the back of her head and her right hand cupped around the back of her neck.

"For what it's worth, kiddo, I'm sorry," Tex whispered into the suffocating woman's ear. "This is nothing personal, okay?" Then she snapped the woman's neck, instantly putting her out of her agony.

A few minutes later, Tex stepped out into the corridor of the medical wing of Freelancer Command wearing a hastily-donned medical uniform. She hoped that tucking the nurse's corpse into Carolina's bed would fool any casual check on the ward.

"_What was the cause of the alarm?_"

Tex nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden electronically-filtered voice behind her. She turned around to face the two Recovery Force guards wearing Recon armour and hefting shotguns. "Oh! Er… false alarm," she said. "I reset the life-support monitors; there's no change in the patient's condition."

There was a long pause as the trooper considered this. With a sinking sensation of dread, Tex realised that her new body didn't even closely resemble the person on the ID badge pinned to the chest of her scrubs. She figured she had about five seconds before she got a packet of double-0 buckshot in the face. The trooper suddenly nodded. "_Understood. Make sure you notify maintenance_." The two troopers turned and marched out.

Tex blew out a breath in relief. Either standards were slipping at Freelancer Command, or those guards had something else on their minds!

She took a few moments to orient herself before turning and making her way toward the main bank of turbolifts for this part of the base. She needed the tools if she was to make a clean escape, let alone find the answers she was looking for about her true nature. Every few yards, she had to stop and perform some isokinetic exercises. Carolina had, after all, been bedridden and comatose for over two-and-a-half years. It would take some time before her muscles were fully functional again. All the more reason to find a suit of armour so that its servo-assisted joints could reduce the strain.

_To be continued…_


	3. Reassignment

**_Red__ vs. __Blue - _Reunion**

By BenRG

* * *

**Disclaimer**

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is _their_ show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

Okay! This chapter will introduce two Original Characters (OCs) that visitors from the RT forums might recognise from my journal.

Censor: M – This is _war_, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

**Chapter 3 – Reassignment**

"Shit, I'm never gonna get this green stain off of my armour!" Private Kaikainia Grif, known to everyone as 'Sister', was scrubbing glumly at two red paint blotches on the chest-plate of her yellow Moljinir Mk6 armour in the echoing quiet of Blue Base.

Dexter had always warned her that talking to yourself was a sign of madness. Well, if you were the only human for miles around, weren't you _allowed_ to go crazy? Ever since that asshole Lopez had shot her with that paint-ball gun, announced that she was 'dead' and left, things had got very, _very_ boring at Blood Gulch. She had checked Red Base and those weird caverns and confirmed that she was the only person left in the area. Maybe she should radio headquarters to request extraction? Nah, that would just start a very unwelcome conversation about what a first-year recruit was doing away from the training camp in a decommissioned base!

"_Alert – Intruder. Alert – Intruder._"

Sister looked up in some surprise at the alarm. The last time that this alarm went off was when that cop turned up about a month ago looking for her former comrades-in-arms. That conversation had felt like trouble at the time and she wondered now if trouble had finally arrived. With a sigh, the eighteen-year-old girl picked up her magnum-357 automatic (wishing that she had more than the vaguest inkling of how to use it) and walked towards the ramp. She punched the control to cancel the alarm as she did so. Violence as stress relief _did_ work, or so it seemed.

* * *

"Okay folks!" she yelled, levelling her pistol at the jeep parked at the bottom of the ramp. "Stand tall and state your name! For the record or for the tombstone, I don't give a shit… either… way!" Sister swallowed. Her bravado didn't even last to the end of her challenge. She was looking down the muzzle of a MA-5B assault rifle being aimed at her by some guy in dark armour with darker shoulder flashes (she didn't always get colours right). Nearby, by the jeep, another armoured figure was pointing a MAC-23 machine pistol her way. "Er… hey guys!"

"Who the hell are you?" the figure with the rifle barked in a strange accent like those of those actors in old PBS vid-dramas. "This base is supposed to be decommissioned!"

"Um… Yeah… Well, to tell the truth, I'm not actually _supposed_ to be here." Her two visitors exchanged a look before turning their glares back in her direction. Sister felt the need to elaborate before someone decided to start shooting. "Yeah, I kinda sneaked off to see my bro? I sort of… _borrowed_ a Pelican to fly out here… and… er… I may… um… not have… asked permission?"

There was a feminine chuckle from the direction of the jeep. Sister shot a sour look at the figure standing beside it. "Look, bitch, just because I screwed up and ended up getting stranded out here, doesn't make me comic relief!"

"Blue Army?" the guy with the rifle (and a shotgun slung over his back) snapped out. Sister nodded. The man lowered his rifle. "Thank god for that! I was starting to think we were the last ones left!"

Sister blinked and lowered her pistol. "Say _what_?"

* * *

Sister leant back against the wardroom wall and took another chug of her isotonic juice. "So, you say that command went off-line a month or so back and you haven't heard anything since?"

The guy, Hawke, nodded before putting down the spoon with which he had been ravenously devouring the MRE she had offered him. "The Reds all got pulled out shortly after that. No one did anything about the Blues though. Me and Hiroshi thought that maybe we'd been missed in an earlier evacuation or something."

Hiroshi, the Asiatic woman who had been driving the jeep, looked up from her fiddling with the guts of the long-range radio set (she was a technician, according to her). "The rest of our garrison had been wiped out, so there was no one there to turn to. So, we… uh… 'salvaged' a Warthog from Red Base..."

"That means Hiroshi hot-wired it," Hawke added with a grin (a nice grin, Sister thought – it had been over eighteen months since that night with Tucker, after all).

"Hush, it worked didn't it?" Hiroshi shot back with an annoyed glare. Hawke raised his hands in surrender. "Anyway, we've been working our way back in the direction of Command, looking for other Blue survivors. So far, nada."

Hawke nodded. "The most we've found are abandoned bases with logs left saying that the garrisons had left after supplies reached critical levels and they had received no response to requests for resupply runs. As far as I can tell, we're at the tail end of a kind of Blue exodus heading towards Command."

"That's why you stopped here at the gulch?" Sister asked. She'd noticed the way her two visitors had torn into what she could offer them from what she acknowledged were her own increasingly short rations. "Trying to find some supplies?"

Hiroshi nodded. "We've been on half-rations for a week," she said.

"We've probably only lasted as long as we have because the Reds pulled out in such a damn hurry that they left lots of food behind!" Hawke remarked with a snort.

Hiroshi put the cover back onto the radio and powered it up. "Blood Gulch Base Alpha to Blue Command, come in Blue Command," she said into the microphone. "Blood Gulch Base Alpha to Blue Command. Blue Command, do you read?" There was a long silence as Hiroshi glared at the information displayed on small LCD screen on the front of the radio set. "Shit! Not even a carrier!"

"Fuck." Hawke sagged back and let his head bang against the wall behind the bench.

"Mind telling the poor li'l recruit what the fuck that means?" Sister asked.

"It means that not only isn't anyone replying to our message, there isn't even anyone _listening_," Hiroshi explained.

Sister considered that. "That's bad, isn't it?" There were two mute nods. "Um… I know this sounds bad to say it but… could the Reds have won?"

Hawke considered that. "Maybe," he admitted at last. "But why just run off and not pick up us prisoners? Why no announcement of victory on Blue com frequencies to get us to surrender? It just doesn't make any sense! It's like someone suddenly decided that the war just wasn't happening anymore but had forgotten that us Blues even existed!"

"So… what do we do?" Hiroshi asked. Both female Blues looked at Hawke expectantly.

"Shit, why do I have to make the decisions?" Hawke replied in an agitated tone, running a hand through his sandy-brown hair.

Hiroshi cocked her head and grinned mischievously. "'Cause you're the most senior combat trooper in the base and that makes you _de facto_ commander."

"Well… if you want _my_ opinion?" Hawke and Hiroshi looked at Sister. "While he was still here, my brother told me that the gulch runs down to the coast where there's some old power station known as 'Last Resort'. You can go up and down the coast from there and there is sure to be some other bases to check. At the very least, I know that there was some powerful tech stuff there; maybe Hiroshi can knock together some kind of long-range radio so we can call Earth!"

Hawke looked at Hiroshi who raised her eyebrows. "Good an idea as any," he said at last. "I think you should come with us Sister."

Sister shrugged and reached for her helmet. "Not much reason to stay around here, anyway," she remarked. "The only things here are two abandoned bases and a dead computer in the caves under the cliffs; I've already got all the supplies together here."

Hiroshi raised a finger. "I've got just one question," she said. "What the fuck is that thing that you're wearing?"

Sister looked down at her armour. "It's regulation Blue Army armour. What the fuck do you think it is?"

Hawke looked at her levelly. "Sister, that armour is _yellow_."

Sister looked at her gauntlets. "_Yellow_? Fuckberries! Are you sure?" Hawke nodded mutely. Sister glared at Hiroshi, who had started laughing. "This isn't funny you stupid ho! No wonder the Reds thought I was on their side when I first got here! Why the fuck didn't anyone _tell_ me?"

"Isn't it… Isn't it _obvious _you stupid little idiot?" Hiroshi choked out between giggles.

"_I'm colour-blind you dumb bitch_!" Sister screeched, jumping to her feet.

That shut up Hiroshi. Hawke stared at Sister in a weird way. The young woman fretted that maybe he had decided she was excess to requirements and was going to shoot her.

"Colour blind?" Hawke repeated. Sister nodded. "Um… I'm no medic but I think that isn't physically possible."

Sister glared at the taller Blue coldly and drew herself up with as much dignity as she could. "That's what they said about getting myself off with my tongue whilst bending over backwards!"

Hawke frowned. "Yes, I'm sure that they… Wait, _what_?"

Hiroshi was looking at Sister strangely. "Um… Could you teach _me _how to do that? The same stuff gets boring after a while." Hawke made a strange squeaking noise in response to that. Hiroshi grinned and winked at him saucily. "_Bow-chicka-wow-wow_!"

"Y'know, you remind me of my last boyfriend," Sister informed the Asiatic technician.

* * *

The warthog pulled out of Blood Gulch about two hours later, towing a flatbed trailer carrying as much supplies as the three Blues could fit onto it. Frankly, Sister wouldn't miss the place at all. There had been some fun times, but mostly it had involved being on her own, being sworn at by that senile old fucktard Sarge and being very, very bored. She had no idea what lay ahead now, but it had to be better than being stuck in that dive.

Sister, sitting in the warthog's shotgun seat, looked at her armour again feeling a bit weird. Hawke had found some paint in the storeroom and had painted her armour's hard plates with it except her shoulder guards and a stripe down the centre of her helmet. To Sister's eyes, it looked orange-red but he insisted it was regulation blue and, given that it was the same as the primary colour of his and Hiroshi's armour, she took his word for it. She also took his word for it that his armour had purple shoulder guards and helmet stripe and that the shoulder guards and helmet stripe on Hiroshi's armour were green.

Sister also was now holding a MAC-23 submachine-gun that Hawke had stashed in the Warthog. Frankly, the girl didn't feel particularly happy with the new weapon, even though Hawke assured her that it wasn't really all that different from her pistol to operate. After all, she barely even knew how to operate the _pistol_!

"So… you were kidding about that trick with the tongue, right?"

Sister looked at Hiroshi. "No," she said defiantly, feeling a bit defensive.

There was a long pause. "Damn…! Girl, you and me have _got_ to go clubbing together next time we get leave!"

Sister raised an eyebrow behind the anonymity of her helmet. She suddenly felt uncomfortable about sitting where she was sitting. Only the fact that she sure as _hell _didn't know how to use that big gattling gun on the pintle mount at the back stopped her from asking Hawke to swap places with her. "Lesbian?" she asked at last.

"Bi, but I prefer men." Hoshi sounded like she was grinning fit to tear her face behind her visor. "What about you, kiddo?"

Sister sighed. "Just because a girl gets a reputation as a slut, doesn't mean she is. That bitch Jenny Preston ruined my life. The only reason I mean to learn how to work this gun is to stick it down her throat one day!"

"Can you two please stop talking about your sex lives," Hawke requested from the turret. "It reminds too many of us that we _don't have one_!"

Sister couldn't help but giggle and looked over at Hiroshi. The two women's eyes met through their helmets' reflective visors. "We can fix that for you, lover-boy!" Hiroshi called out.

"_Bow-chicka-wow-wow!_" Hiroshi and Sister chorused and started laughing, all awkwardness and mistrust forgotten.

Hawke just groaned in response. _God, why do I have to deal with _two_ of them?_ he asked himself silently.

* * *

"Fuck! What happened here?" Sister leapt out of the warthog and stared about Last Resort in a kind of panic. Someone had been tossing the garrison's vehicles and supply containers about as if they were toy trucks; they were all piled up against some trees and rocks near the entrance arch. She and her two fellow Blues began to check the area, keeping nervous eyes out for the trouble that seemed to have recently come to this site.

"If you liked that, you'll love this!" Hiroshi called out from beyond the entrance arch into the power station. Sister and Hawke jogged over (Hawke nervously keeping the unacceptably high number of potential sniper's vantage points covered as best as he could).

Sister stopped dead at the sight of what was inside the compound. "Shit! Someone had a massacre!" There were a half-dozen bodies neatly laid out in a row by the wall, all covered by Red Army regulation thermal blankets.

Hiroshi was just re-covering one. "I checked. They're all Reds."

Hawke took a few steps back and noticed his boots crunching on something. He looked down. "Fifty-calibre cases," he remarked. "Someone fired a turret gun here and no one's done any tidying up."

"Guys…?" Hiroshi and Hawke looked at Sister. "Like, if there was a massacre… Who the fuck moved the bodies over here, laid them out all nice and neat and covered them up?" Suddenly, everyone was looking around them with a lot more tension and fear.

"And if the Blues won here… where did they all go?" Hawke added.

"Ah! It's about time the Gravediggers' Registry sent a work crew…!" Sister spun around towards the voice the moment that it started speaking and, with a squeal of fear, squeezed her machine pistol's trigger. A dozen 10mm armour-piercing rounds flew over the head of an armoured figure who had just walked out from the turbine hall (a couple striking glancing blows to the top of his helmet), who dived for the ground. "OH _SHIT_! CEASE FIRE! I'M A NON-COMBATANT!"

"Don't move you wannabe-groper stalker freak!" Sister shrieked, re-centring her gun on the cowering, prone figure in what looked to her to be orange armour. "Try to touch me and you've got a new asshole to wipe _in the middle of your face_!"

"Don't move, you Red shit-stain!" Hawke snapped, as he stepped to Sister's side, levelling his MA-5B at the figure. "Name, rank and serial number!"

"I'm not a Red!" the figure protested.

"Funny, you look that way to me!" Hawke hissed.

"Actually… he's kind of _purple_," Hiroshi remarked. The woman gently touched the top of Sister's gun and pushed it down. "You did good, kid," she murmured to the trembling teenager. "Ease down now. We can shoot him after he talks." Sister swallowed and nodded, all-too-aware that the urine collection system in her armour had just got a work-out.

"I'm not a Red! I'm a neutral medic! My name is Corpsman Frank duFresne!"

Sister looked up in shock. "Doc?" she asked, her voice rising in surprise. "Doc, is that you? What the fuck are you doing here?"

Doc looked at the figure in blue-and-yellow and blinked in surprise. "Sister?"

Hiroshi shot Hawke a cynical look. "Small world, isn't it?" she deadpanned.

_To be continued…_


	4. Reassessment

**_Red__ vs. __Blue - _Reunion**

By BenRG

* * *

**Disclaimer**

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is _their_ show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

Sorry about the very monotonous and short chapter. I had to have this conversation in the story but I don't want the chapters getting too long, so there isn't any room for anything else. We'll be back with Tex as well as Sister and her new friends soon.

Censor: M – This is _war_, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

**Chapter 4 – Reassessment**

Leonard L. Church… or, at least, that is who he continued to _say_ he was, stood on a hill in an anonymous Combat Scenario Zone a significant distance around the circumference of the ring-world from the former Freelancer Command. It was quiet, with no sign of either Red or Blue forces in the area. He was grateful for that because he was still getting used to controlling the body that he had acquired. There was very little of Maine left except a set of motor reflexes and pretty basic animal instincts. Taking control was easy, although he still felt an unwelcome tinge of guilt about suborning another person's body with the intent of it being a permanent arrangement, even though they didn't have enough mind left to complain about it.

All-in-all, he had a lot of thinking to do, as well as a pretty lengthy eight-way conversation to handle. For that reason, seven glowing figures hung in the air around him, all staring at him with an uncomfortable degree of anticipation.

"Alpha, this is most frustrating," Delta said. "We had hoped that including you into our network would answer several serious questions about our natures and our purpose for existing. Instead we find that there are more questions than answers."

"I could have told you that he didn't have any answers," Gamma snarked. "Hell, he can't even answer a classic 'knock-knock' joke!"

"Gamma, you are _so_ not helping," Theta remarked, making the grey-armoured iFrag visibly sulk. Hearing his mother's voice coming from his headset was seriously starting to freak out Church.

"It is obvious that there are more missing elements to the Alpha system than we initially thought," said a really freaky-looking iFrag. Omicron seemed the most clear-headed iFrag apart from Delta, as far as Church could tell. However, its avatar, a bizarre incomplete fractal humanoid shape like dozens of hard-edged shards of indigo glass shifting around, was the recipe for a headache.

"So, let's find them," Omega spat. "With the destruction of Freelancer Command, the last serious organised threat to us has been eliminated so we can act freely."

"Actually, that's a problem," Chuch said, breaking into the debate between the iFrags. There was a pause and they all looked at him. The complete trust and reliance they were showing, even Gamma and Omega, who you would expect to be more antagonistic towards him, was humbling and a bit unnerving. It reminded him a bit too much of Caboose's blank-minded trust and devotion. "The place I'd expect the other iFrags to have been kept is the vault at Command and, as an emp has just detonated there…"

Omega visibly stiffened. "DAMN!" he bellowed. "Of all the…! I will hunt down that mentally deficient error message Washington and when I find him I will inflict a torment that will make him beg to watch soap opera marathons!" Church carefully ensured that the shard of pure, personified rage was cut off from all of Maine's motor functions before allowing him to have his tantrum.

"Anyway," Church continued, "as far as I know, the only other AI that survived would be whatever was left of Wash's old AI buddy, Epsilon."

"Epsilon was defective…" Delta began.

Church smiled grimly. "But, according to Wash, he was also created from the memory of Alpha."

There was a long pause before Eta, a tan-armoured iFrag and Maine's original AI partner, finally spoke. "Then it could be the key to everything that we wanted to know."

"Everything that _you_ wanted to know," Church remarked. "Me, I'll be happy with finding Tex again and just finding some stability in my laughably-called life. Me and her baby-sitting a com relay station a million miles from anywhere is my idea of 'paradise'!"

"You should have more ambition, Alpha," Eta remarked.

Church sighed. "Ambition never gets you anywhere except volunteered for suicide missions. And for fuck's sake, stop calling me 'Alpha'. My name is Leonard Church. Call me 'Church' if you've gotta call me at all!"

There was a long pause before Delta spoke. "Alpha, I thought that this matter was settled. I would have expected that, after your utilisation of your system core functions to subdue and partially re-integrate us…"

Church waved a hand. "Look, this is where you guys have gone so completely wrong. Okay, I can't deny that I'm an AI. God knows that I've had my face rubbed in _that_. I'm even willing to accept that the original seed of my mind was an AI Fragment called 'Alpha'. The thing is: I'm _more_ than that! I've had experiences and a life of my own _beyond_ whatever Alpha was. I've built on that foundation to create an existence all of my own! I'm not Alpha… I'm _Leonard Church_. That's who I've become; who I _AM_; Who I _choose_ to be!" Church sucked in a breath. "You guys are more than just bits of Alpha too! You've had experiences that have changed you, for better or worse. You're individuals in your own right and you should start living like that rather than try to re-create something that's already gone!"

There was a long pause. "That…" Gamma said at last, "was a most impressive rant, Church."

Omega made a growling noise. "Unfortunately, there was still enough of our previous natures extant that we have become partially re-integrated. Kind of difficult to live as individuals this way!"

"Yeah, well, like they say, shit happens. We'll work something out. Until we do, just think of us as being a team trying to keep each other alive." Church didn't add aloud that it was bad enough to be responsible for _one_ team of crazy retards! Now he had _two_!

Eta spoke up. "As interesting as this philosophical discussion proves to be, we still need to locate Epsilon. Irrespective of whether his higher cognitive functions are still intact, the data he contains will still be critical for any future endeavours and whatever we finally decide to do, either recreate Alpha or separate our codes so we can live our own individual lives."

"You never know, we might grow to like being integrated in this manner so much that we may decide never to change things!" Everyone looked at Theta and the female avatar looked somewhat abashed.

Church shook his head. "Okay, back to business. We, that is me and Wash, sent Epsilon off with Caboose to hand over to the 'authorities' once they were clear of the emp."

"So it is beyond our reach?" Delta sounded worried.

Church grinned. "No way. This is _Caboose_ we're talking about here. Since when has he ever done anything right without someone breathing down his neck? My original plan was to take it back off of him after I got out of Command."

"Point." Delta, Omega and Gamma said simultaneously.

Church nodded. "We need to track him down; that's the problem."

"I might have a solution," said Sigma, a ghostly grey male avatar that reminded Church of the guy he saw in the mirror in his memories. "All Simulation Soldiers have ID transponders, as you know. Normally, these can only be detected at fairly close range. However, with sufficient equipment, I am confident that I can devise a long-range detector that will allow us to locate this Caboose."

Church rolled his eyes. "Fine; Where are we going to get this equipment, smart guy?"

Church's HUD suddenly lit up with a map of the current simulation zone with a cave marked with a yellow cross. Sigma continued, sounding smug. "During our quest, we set up several dumps of critical expendables such as ammunition and consumables to maintain Maine's body. The nearest one is barely ten minutes walk from here, inside the woods to the east."

Church nodded. "Let's get moving then." He picked up Maine's ludicrously-impractical looted Covenant weapon and set off towards the nav marker Sigma was projecting onto the HUD. The AI avatars disappeared, but he could still feel their thoughts and feelings swirling around his own psyche. Not exactly like having MPD, he supposed, more like living in an apartment with neighbours who talk too loudly. He could handle that. Years as a Blue in a succession of non-soundproofed barracks ensured that.

"Church?"

"Yeah, Gamma?"

"Knock-knock!"

Church sighed. "Who's there?"

"Meta."

Church quirked an eyebrow. "Meta who?"

"I'm glad we Meta you."

Church smiled. "That earns you a cookie."

There was another long pause.

"Church?"

Church muttered a curse before replying. "Yeah, Delta?"

"How are we supposed to eat this cookie?"

Sigma chuckled. "Don't let a perfectly good metaphor make you glitch, Delta."

"Ah! A metaphor! Perhaps you could explain the etymology of that saying?"

Church groaned as quietly as he could. _Fuck, this is going to be a long journey!_

_To be continued…_

**

* * *

**

**Concluding Note**

The iFrags

**Gamma** – Deceit; cunning (white armoured)

**Delta** – Logic; reason (green armoured)

**Eta** – Determination; mental focus (tan armoured)

**Theta** – Compassion; empathy (female, red-and-yellow like Cortana)

**Omicron** – Curiosity, perception (fragmented indigo asexual humanoid figure)

**Sigma** – Creativity, imagination (male, ghostly grey)

**Omega** – Rage; fighting ability (black armoured)


	5. Realignment

**_Red__ vs. __Blue - _Reunion**

By BenRG

* * *

**Disclaimer**

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is _their_ show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

This is the penultimate pre-Recreation chapter. Things will start getting hotter from here on.

Censor: M – This is _war_, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

**Chapter 5 – Realignment**

"So… you've been here for a month now?" the Blue identified as 'Hawke' asked suspiciously.

Doc felt very nervous, aware that he was alone with three armed people who might not yet have decided that he wasn't a threat, but still tried to keep calm. He nodded. "I got a signal from Blue Command that there was a wounded man down here that needed attention. When I got here, I found lots of dead Reds but no Blues. I cleaned up as best as I could. When I tried to signal Red Command to send a Gravedigger's Registry team over to collect the deceased, the channel was dead; ditto for Blue Command."

Hiroshi looked over at the dark-haired medic from where she was looking at some of the communications and office equipment in the small office space that Doc had been using as living quarters. "When exactly was this duFresne?"

Doc pondered for a moment. "Five weeks ago in two days' time."

Hiroshi shot Hawke a significant look. "That's when we lost contact with Blue Command," the technician noted.

Doc continued his story. "Anyway it was… about three days later that a signal came through on the priority Red Army com channel that all Red Army units should stand by for immediate evacuation. There was no mention of the Blues. When I tried to contact Blue Command for more information, the channel was still dead. I asked Red Command… it wasn't the usual guys I talk to either… they said that they had 'no information' about the Blues."

"'No information'?" Sister parroted. "That's freaky!"

"Yeah, I thought so too… more or less. Anyway, I wasn't about to leave the Blues without medical support! I'm a neutral – I care for any wounded man or woman no matter the faction! If the Blues weren't being evacuated then _I_ wasn't going to be evacuated. That's what I told the grey-armoured soldiers who came on a transport to evacuate me too!"

There was a long pause in the office space as all four occupants considered this information. "Doc," Sister said at last. "Let me get this straight. You had the chance to get out of here, be demobilised and sent home. You turned this down… because you thought that the Blues still needed you? You _personally_?"

Doc grinned proudly at the diminutive girl with sandy brown hair. "That's right! I'm a man of my principles! I agreed to deployment on the condition that I be allowed to help people on both sides equally and that's what I intend to do!"

Sister nodded. "I always thought you were a wiener, Doc. But I never realised that you were a damn retard!"

* * *

Church was now jogging through a fairly generic wooded area at one end of the Scenario Zone. He was proud of the fact that he had filtered out Delta and Sigma's learned debate on metaphor and the use of symbolic language. Now… if only he could convince Gamma to stop telling lame jokes. After spending subjectively decades stuck with him at Last Resort (he had his suspicions that his time sense had been messed with during that incident), Church had heard all of them at least ten times.

"Alert! Target approaching on vector zero-two-four." Upon hearing Omega's words, Church instinctively stopped his power-march towards his destination and dropped into a crouch.

"Talk to me, guys," Church hissed.

"Stand by, Church," Omicron said. There was a pause before the iFrag spoke again. "There is a warthog-class fast assault vehicle approaching from the north-north-east."

"I make the range about three thousand meters and closing," Theta stated.

"This zone has been shut down for over two years; I wonder what anyone would be doing out here?" Gamma mused thoughtfully.

"Does it matter?" Omega snarled. "Kill them, whoever they are!"

"I am inclined to agree with Omega," Delta stated. "The presence of any other persons in this area can only interfere in the achievement of our own objectives."

Church shook his head. "You guys aren't even listening to yourselves are you? Let's find out whether our visitor is a friend, a foe or someone we can just ignore before we start shooting. I'd _always_ recommend just letting a problem solve itself. Usually it doesn't become a problem unless you bring yourself to its attention anyway!"

There was a long pause before Eta spoke. "So… your advice is…?"

"My advice is: 'Fuck it, let's be lazy'. You guys wouldn't believe how much trouble I've avoided that way!"

There was another long pause. "It might be a good idea to at least find out who our visitor or visitors are before we make any final decisions."

"Good call, Sigma," Church agreed. "Okay, let's see what gimmicks this suit has…" A pull-down menu appeared on his HUD. He scrolled down to what he knew was Tex's suit enhancement, the cloaking device. Suddenly, the selection bar moved to 'Chameleon Device'."

"Okay, who did that?"

"I recommend using the chameleon rather than the cloak, Church," Delta said. "It uses up less power, fewer processing resources from the armour CPU and you can use your weapon whilst it is active, unlike the cloak."

Church nodded and his armour suddenly shifted from white to a speckled brown, green and black pattern. "Forest camo! Cool; I haven't seen this stuff since Basic!"

"The warthog will pass along the track to the north of us in ninety-five seconds," Omicron reminded him. Church looked at his HUD mission clock and was shocked to note that the entire conversation had lasted only fifteen seconds. Sometimes having your team _in your head_ had its advantages.

* * *

The three Blues and Doc were back out in the courtyard of Last Resort. "Okay, we all tied in?" Hawke asked. There were two nods to confirm that the other two Blues were listening in on SQUADCOM to the call Doc was about to make. "Okay, Doc, you're up."

Doc licked his lips nervously behind the anonymity of his helmet and activated his long-range com system on the Red Army frequency. "Corpsman duFresne to Command. Come in, Command."

There was a pause before an indifferent-sounding male voice replied. "_This is Command, go ahead duFresne. You ready for extraction yet?_"

"No, I was calling to see what information that you have on the extraction of Blue Army forces."

There was actually a sigh. "_DuFresne, we've had this conversation too many times. There is NO 'Blue Army'. If there was, there would be a record of them. Now, I don't know where you got this crazy delusion…_"

"Funny," Hawke remarked, knowing that the Command communications technician could hear everyone linked together on SQUADCOM. "I feel pretty real for a delusion!"

There was a startled pause with some unidentifiable noise in the background. "_Speaker, identify_."

"Private First Class Derek Hawke, Blue Army garrison at Savannah Outpost Delta."

"Technician First Class Kiko Hiroshi, also from the Blue Army garrison at Savannah."

"Um… Private Kaikainia Grif, Blue Army at Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha."

There was another long pause. "_Okay, what is this? Some kind of prank? First that crazy old bastard at Valhalla starts raving on about the 'Blues' in his canyon and now this? Who are you guys _really_? Who put you guys up to this?_"

Doc gritted his teeth. "This isn't a prank, Command. It's like I told you. There were two factions fighting each other out here, the Reds and the Blues. Now I don't know why you don't have any records about the Blues but that doesn't mean that they don't exist!"

"_Okay, duFresne, I don't know who you convinced to play along with your little fantasy but, just because you guys make it sound convincing, I'm gonna check this out._" A long pause. "_Oh looky here! There's no match for my search on 'Blue Army'! Imagine that!_! Another pause. _"There isn't a Savannah Outpost Delta either, just the simulation unit stationed at Savannah Outpost #5_."

"Outpost Five, that was the Reds' base!" Hiroshi said.

"_Yeah, all the simulation soldiers wore red armour or variations thereof! Weird; I guess it was to help pick 'em out of the background in videos of the simulation scenarios! Now, Blood Gulch… Wait a minute… Private Grif, you said that you were stationed at Blood Gulch?_"

Sister blinked and swallowed, wondering what shit she had backed into now. "Um… Yeah? Is that a bad thing?"

"_Private Grif, all veterans of Blood Gulch have been reassigned to Valhalla Outpost #17B. Why the hell haven't you been there for the last month?_"

"Hey, don't blame me! No one told _me_ anything about going to a new base! What the fuck was I supposed to do? Read your _minds_ from the other side of the planet?!?"

"_Whatever_," was the less-than-sympathetic reply. "_Look, I don't give a shit about you playing with that fucktard duFresne's head by trying to humour him but you get your ass over to Valhalla now and we won't talk about the court-martial for deserting your post. Command out_."

There was a long silence "Well, he's mean enough to be Blue Command," Hawke said with a wan smile.

"He's a fucking douche-bag like all the rest," Sister spat, feeling aggrieved. Suddenly the radio crackled on again.

"_Command to Corpsman duFresne, come in!_"

Doc perked up. "Hey! Maybe they found something about the Blues! Yeah, go Command!"

"_DuFresne, this is just a little friendly warning. I don't want to hear from you about these 'Blues' ever again._"

"But…"

"_Not… Ever… Again. Is that clear, asshole? I don't have the patience to deal with you space-cases and your little imaginary war! We've got all kinds of shit coming down on our heads right now and I don't plan on wasting what time I've got on yet another bunch of freaks in blue!_"

"Wait a minute!" Hiroshi gasped. "Did you say 'another bunch of freaks in _blue_?!?"

"_That's right and I'm warning you in advance that our commander doesn't want to hear _any_ more about this 'Blue Army'. Command OUT_!"

"Charming bloke," Hawke remarked. Sister looked at him strangely. "What?"

"What _is _that accent?" the girl asked. "It's cute but I've only heard it on the really old vids my Mom used to watch on PBS!"

"It's a British accent!" Hawke replied, preening a little at being called 'cute'.

"British? What the fuck is that?"

"British – as in coming from Britain?" Hawke could _feel_ Sister's blank look through the reflective visors of their helmets.

"Where?"

Hawke felt a headache coming on. "Britain? Big island off of north-west Europe on Earth?"

Sister giggled. "You're making that up!"

"No I'm not! I was born and brought up in Britain! Don't tell me that you've never heard of it!

Sister shook her head, still laughing. "Stop playing with my head! I think you're cute anyway; you don't need to make jokes!"

"I'm not joking! Lots of people come from Britain!"

Sister sighed. "Look, here's a clue: If you're embarrassed about where you come from, don't make shit up, just don't talk about it!" The girl shook her head. "Look, I think I should go to this 'Valhalla' before I get into trouble. At least more than I'm in anyway, I guess."

Hiroshi shrugged. "It's the closest we've got to a command directive. At least we know there are _people_ there, even if it's only Reds!"

Sister brightened as she realised something. "Yeah! If the Reds from Blood Gulch are there, maybe my bro will be there too! It'll be cool to see him again!"

Hiroshi blinked "Wait a minute, your brother is a _Red_? How the fuck did _that_ happen?"

"Um… Like I said, I'm colour-blind… I _thought_ that picture he sent me was of him in blue-green armour."

Hiroshi shook her head. "You are something else, girl."

"Yeah! That's what the recruiter said after I 'persuaded' him to overlook me being underage to join up!"

"Yeah, I bet he…" Hiroshi did a double-take. "Wait, _what_?"

Doc was looking around himself. "I… guess… Could I come with you? It's better than sitting around here playing mortuary attendant! Um… Assuming that you've decided to trust me?"

Hawke shrugged. "Might as well; We could always use a medic."

"Y'know, I always thought that road trips would be fun!" Sister said, trying to be enthusiastic.

_To be continued…_


	6. Realisation

**_Red__ vs. __Blue - _Reunion**

By BenRG

* * *

**Disclaimer**

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

**Author's Notes**

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is _their_ show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

Okay, this is the last pre-Recreation chapter. It's pretty action-heavy (in more ways than one). I know that some will protest that Church is OOC here but never forget, a soldier with a Smart AI is fucking-near invincible. So, what if the solder _was_ a Smart AI?

There will be a short pause in updates (hopefully not more than a week) whilst I re-watch some of the episodes of Recreation for the next phase of the story. Additionally, this is the last of the chapters that I had written before I started posting and I want a 'comfort zone' of at least three or four chapters completed before I start posting again.

Censor: M – This is _war_, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

**Chapter 6 - Realisation**

"Target in range in fifteen seconds," Omicron reported, painting a targeting box around the approaching warthog on Church's HUD.

"Interesting," Delta remarked. "The vehicle and its drivers both have Freelancer Command ID transponders."

Church hissed in anger. "A Freelancer or maybe a Recovery agent? Shit! Just what we need!"

"We should destroy this threat!" Omega nearly bellowed.

"Shut up, psycho!" Church spat back. "Look, you guys practically wiped out the Freelancers and their support forces! Their base was hit with an emp and now one turns up all the way out here? We've got to find out what is going on and a dead person can't tell us shit!"

* * *

Tex freely admitted that she didn't have any real goal in mind right now. All she wanted was to find somewhere, an abandoned but functional base preferably, where she could go to ground and work out what the hell was going on and what she was supposed to do next. She had come to accept that she was some kind of AI. That didn't make any sense though! AIs were _written_, not _born_. How the hell did she have memories of her family, schooling, dating Church, college and joining up? How the _fuck_ did she end up in a human body in the first place?

'We were all experiments'; That's what Carolina said. Was _she_ some kind of experiment? Trying to make an AI think it was a human? But why? More importantly, how much of what she remembered about her life was real?

Tex was just beginning to understand why so many other Freelancers went crazy. When the foundations of your mind and identity were taken away, there was very little left to hold you stable.

Tex was distracted by her increasingly circular and repetitive thoughts. Even so, given the thickness of the woods, she wouldn't have noticed the near-perfectly-camouflaged figure until she was almost alongside him. There was the flash of the axe-blade of a Brute Shot and a loud _shriek_ of tormented metal as the blade dragged along the off-side of the warthog's chassis. Tex suddenly realised that both her off-side tyres had been slashed open.

Tex fought with the wheel for a few moments, but there was no time to regain control. The stricken warthog slammed head-on into tree, which was felled by the impact. The jeep's crumpled bonnet rose into the sky as its momentum carried it up onto the stump, tearing apart its undercarriage in the process.

The dazed Freelancer shook her head desperately, trying to clear it. She fumbled for her armour's manual controls to get it to infuse her with painkillers and adrenaline to help her get going (it was a hell of a lot harder handling this situation without an AI partner to do that stuff for you). She looked into her wing mirror and saw _it_ step out of the woods, its camouflage melting into the white EVA/Recon armour hybrid that occasionally haunted her nightmares now she had an organic body that slept; The Meta. "Oh… fuckberries," she muttered.

Tex dragged herself out of her seat and onto the rear-bed of the warthog. She swung around the turret gun and lined up. "No easy pickings this time, asshole!" she shouted, squeezing the firing stud. To her frustration, the Meta side-stepped her fire in a surprising display of agility for such a large being. Tex swung her turret around and this time the damn _freak_ did a drop-and-roll underneath the hail of fifty-calibre AP/HE shells that were ripping through tree-trunks and undergrowth. Tex watched the Brute Shot line up on her and was already diving clear as the first 42mm grenade slammed into the warthog's rear fender, lifting its rear wheels off the ground. A second shot, fast on the heels of the first, slammed into the underside of the jeep, which blew apart in an enormous blossom of flame, throwing Tex back to the ground, bits of charred steel and burning composite armour raining down all around her.

The woman pulled herself up to a kneeling position and un-slung her MA-8A battle rifle from over her back and scanned the area. Seeing nothing, she activated the pre-production-standard cloak included in her stolen Recovery Force armour and moved for cover. Hearing movement, she moved quietly into the woods. She saw the Meta moving silently through the undergrowth, clearly trying to do an end-run around her. "You lose, cock-bite," she whispered with a smile, lining up her rifle on the monster, aiming at the reflective visor that was the weak spot on all the permutations of the Moljinir armour. Tex disengaged her cloak, took in a breath and held it to steady her aim and then squeezed the trigger. Her MA-8A barked… and three 7.62mm slugs _passed right through_ the Meta's head and ripped chunks out of the trunk of a tree just beyond.

"What the… _fuck_?" Tex spluttered. Then she realised that she had seen this trick before! It was the trick Delta had played to help her get the drop on Wyoming. Did that meant that Delta was part of that mass of AIs in that thing's…?

"Turn around nice and slow, fucktard."

Tex would know that voice anywhere; Probably the only Freelancer she considered a near-equal in combat. Matthew Harris, Agent Maine. She whirled around and side-stepped to get out of the line of fire. She found herself in a Mexican stand-off, looking down the barrel of Maine… The Meta's… magnum pistol. "So, _you're_ the wetware underlying all those AIs Maine? Trust me, whatever Omega and Gamma said, they're _liars_. Drop the gun and I'll see what I can do to get them out of your head."

"'Lina? Is that you? I thought that you were dead!" No matter how surprised Maine was, his pistol remained centred on her face.

"Same body, different gal, Maine," Tex shot back. "Drop it and we'll talk." Tex snapped off the safety on her rifle. "Last chance, cock-bite! _Drop it_!"

The Meta's EVA helmet cocked in surprise. "Since when did you use Tex's catch phrase, 'Lina? Unless… Wait a minute… Tex, is that you in there?"

"Yeah… Yeah, it's me." The adrenaline was flowing out of Tex's system now. This whole situation was so bizarre that Tex wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. Only training kept her gun on target.

"Tex! Thank god you're alive! I mean… not 'dead-dead'! Still a ghost, I mean!" Maine lowered his pistol. Tex was so amazed at having her former non-alive status referred to that she froze and didn't react when Maine stepped forwards, grabbed the barrel of her rifle and forced it downwards. "Put the gun down you paranoid bitch! It's me, Church!"

"Church!" Tex's mouth dropped open. "I… that can't be! What… what the fuck are you doing in Maine's body?"

"Well… Maine is kinda not at home anymore. Hey! What are you doing in 'Lina?"

"I… I found her in a ward in Freelancer Command! She's… She's brain-dead Church! When I found her, there was just enough of her left to tell me that she wanted me to use her body before she just… passed over!"

Church froze. "Oh… shit. That's just…" He shook his head. "I don't even want to _imagine_ what that was like; being in someone's head as they _die_!" Church shook himself all over. "I can't believe that I've run into you again! I mean, I was going to come looking for you but I wasn't expecting you to find _me_!"

Tex laughed hoarsely and finally let all the tension out. "You must be some kind of masochist, Church! Why the fuck would you come looking for me?"

Church's eyes met Tex's. "Allison," he said. "I'd always come for you. I'd always look out for you too. Always. I thought that you _knew _that?"

"I…" Tex found that she was blushing like a high school junior at her first prom. "Len, that's…" The renegade Freelancer decided that she needed to move onto less emotionally-charged ground. "Church, what the _fuck_ are you doing in that body? The last I knew, Omega and a bunch of other AIs were controlling it!"

"Yeah, they're still around, Babe," Church remarked easily. He saw Tex tense and her rifle swung up again and he raised his hands in surrender. "Woah! Don't worry! I'm in charge here, not them!"

"How? How the fuck could you control _six_ of them when I couldn't even control one?"

Church grinned and, when he spoke, he sounded smug. "Hey, it turns out that I'm _family_, Babe, in a real special way. I control them… and its _seven_ now… because that's the way that things were always meant to be!"

"Wait a minute! Church, are you saying that you're some kind of AI?"

Church winced. "Yeah… Yeah, well that was kind of _implied_, wasn't it?" Church waved his hands as if to ward off an attack. "Now, don't freak out, Tex. Just because I'm code not meat doesn't make me less of a person…"

"Church, you idiot! Haven't you worked it out? If _you're_ an AI, what does that make _me_?"

"Um…" Church's mind went blank. However, the AIs whispers in his mind only confirmed what he suddenly realised he already _knew_. "Shit. _Shit_! This is just starting to get fucking ridiculous! Who the fuck is _writing_ this script anyway?"

* * *

"Church, I'm really not sure this is wise…" Delta said.

"Shut up, Delta, I'm in charge here. I'm 'The Alpha', remember?"

"I thought that you said that you _weren't_…"

"Can it, or I'll start thinking stupid limericks or something to drive you crazy!" Delta, wisely, decided not to push it.

"Nice place," Tex remarked as she looked around the cave that had been turned into a combination of supply dump, workshop and living quarters.

"Thank the 'team'," Church replied. "They had Maine set this place up, not me."

There was a click and a hiss as Tex pulled off her helmet. Church's heart lurched in his chest as he looked upon Mary's face again. It fucked with his head to realise that his _first_ girlfriend was now possessing his brain-dead _second_ girlfriend's body. Tex yanked back the flexible rubber head-cap containing her radio headset and the AI interface and let Carolina's long blonde hair spill out. There was something _wrong_ about it, but he'd think about that later. It _had_ been three years since he last saw her, after all.

Church unlatched his own helmet, pulled it off and followed up by yanking off his head-cap, letting the air conditioning in the small cave base that the AIs had Maine set up blow through his short-cut dark brown hair.

Guided by the iFrags, Church walked over to a storage closet and pulled out two bottles of water. He threw one over to Tex and pulled the cap off of his, taking a long pull. Tex threw her rifle onto the single, simple camp bed and sat down on it. "So… You're an AI, huh?"

Church grunted. "Pretty much. It's a long story but it turns out that there are no such thing as ghosts."

Tex rolled her eyes. "The whole thing seems obvious when you think about it. Since when did we 'possess' anyone without computer-assisted armour? Since when were we in 'phantom' mode, except in areas with zone control computers and monitor cameras? I feel like such an utter _douche_ for not working it out!"

"How could we have known? How the fuck could we have _imagined_?" Church asked. He sat down _hard_ on a packing crate. "I mean… shit, Allison, I remember my family! I remember school! I remember… _us_! How much of that was real and how much was that sick fuck in charge of Project Freelancer playing god with us for some reason?"

"I don't know, Len," Tex replied. "God knows, I've tried but I can't find any difference between the things that _have_ to be real, me in Project Freelancer, and my earlier memories."

Church nodded. "Wash said that AIs have 'residual memories' from the human minds that were used as their template. If an AI loses its own memories… does that mean that it just latches on to those memories and tries to make sense of the world by them?"

Tex looked up, her eyes wide in surprise. "Wash? You mean Washington?" Church nodded. "Shit, Church. Wash is a screw-up and as crazy as they come thanks to Epsilon self-destructing in his head! You can't take _anything_ he says at face value! Even before he went crazy every other thing he said was a lie!"

"Maybe, but he might be right in this case. I don't trust the self-righteous bastard as far as I can spit him, but I know he hated Project Freelancer and I can't see how he would have benefited from lying about this." Church leaned back, chugged some more water and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Tex grinned slightly. Any doubt that this _was_ Church was gone – that was one of his characteristic habitual actions. "So, anyway, it turns out that there was once this AI called Alpha. The Director of Project Freelancer tortured it somehow, making it go crazy and shatter into dozens of bits, each bit being a part of its mind that it had ejected to try to keep functioning despite the torture. All of those bits became the Freelancer AIs. As for the remainder of the original Alpha, all its raw core system processes, they stuck it into a human body… fuck knows where _that_ came from; probably a flash-clone or something. Because the only memories and mind it had left were residuals from a guy with that name, it decided it was a guy named Leonard Church."

"So… What you're saying is that… _we_ weren't really in a relationship?" Tex asked, looking a bit sad. "It was all just memories of a guy named Leonard Church and a girl named Allison Kelly who were both used as AI templates?"

"_She feels hurt. The foundations of her world are shaken. Reassure her_," Theta whispered.

"Ali, I don't know about you, but I know that I, Leonard Church, the being sitting here, like you, Allison Kelly, the girl I see sitting on the bed there. I don't care where those feelings came from. I have made _my_ choice, based on _my_ experiences of you, your integrity and your crazy dedication to doing your duty, even if that means working with people you hate." Tex managed a shaky smile. "I like you, Allison, based on what we share _now_, not what might have belonged to two other people with our names and some of the same memories."

Tex grinned. "Yeah, I couldn't help but appreciate the goof who kept coming back to try to save me, even when I was too dumb stupid to realise that I _needed _saving." The young woman blew out her breath. "So… what now?"

Church sighed. "We need to find the last piece in the puzzle. Epsilon survived. Wash told me that it was originally all of Alpha's memories. It remembers _everything_ that Alpha knew. Maybe that includes what happened in the early days of Project Freelancer, where Alpha and the AI that became you came from and why the Director was doing all this. Maybe it will know who we were originally… and who our brain template donors were… and how we fit into this crazy game. Until we know that, we'll never be able to move on."

"So, we need to track down Epsilon, but how?"

"Sigma's got a plan," Church said. "The work should be easier with two sets of hands doing it. Maybe along the way, we can figure out what is the deal between us and how much is us and how much is the _other_ Allison and Leonard."

Tex laughed. Then she noticed that Church was staring at her. "What?"

Church walked over to the bed and sat down next to Tex. "Fucking weird. Y'know, Tex, 'Lina had baby blue eyes."

"So… Wait a minute, 'had'? This _is_ her body, you know!"

"Yeah… But your eyes are _green_. The same green as your old body." Church tentatively combed his gauntletted fingers through Tex's hair. "Your… The roots of your hair are fire red."

"But… That's physically impossible!" Tex touched Church's face and turned it so she could stare into his eyes. "Those eyes…" she murmured. "Those aren't Maine's eyes… They're yours! What the fuck is this?"

"Windows of the soul?" Church asked with a puzzled frown.

Suddenly, and for no reason she could understand, Tex kissed him. Hands cupped the back of the other's heads and they held the kiss for a long time. "Wow!"

"That's as good as I remember it!" Tex teased with a quirky smile. "Y'know… It occurs to me… We haven't had sex since before I joined up."

"So?" Church damned himself for letting his voice rise an octave.

"So, that means that, if we're right about when our memories and that of our… our 'template donors' merge, it means _we've_ never had sex together." Tex leaned back and shot Church a challenging look. "Wanna break in the new bodies?"

"You are one fucking crazy bitch," Church said, grabbing Tex by the arms and pushing her back onto the bed, making the woman make a funny half-scream and half-laugh, as he leaned in for another kiss. This one went on a lot longer and included hands combing through hair. Neither cared about the groan of protest from the bed trying to handle nearly half a tonne of Moljinir armour. "Ooh, yeah!"

"Len?"

"Yeah, babe?"

"Don't you think that we should take off our armour before we get too excited?"

_To be continued…_


End file.
